DONNA THOMPSON: Warm weather brings on asparagus

Donna Thompson

Monday

May 14, 2018 at 3:38 PM

Last week’s warm weather inspired our asparagus plants to take off and — even better — we can actually spot most of the spears that are coming up.

We didn’t get a very early start at cleaning off the bed, thanks to the March snows and a chilly month of April. Finally, we were able to fit in a couple of sessions and rake off the dead growth from last year.

A few days later I noticed that what we’d really done was give the weeds an opportunity to take off. My next-younger sister and I got back into the asparagus bed again on a recent Saturday and plugged away at yanking some of the weeds while trying not to step on the asparagus spears that were starting to show above the ground.

I remembered having a visitor ask if we had "wild asparagus" last year upon seeing our overgrown bed and having to explain that we just hadn’t done a very good job of cleaning out the weeds.

We didn’t do all that great a job this year either, but we did get rid of some of the weeds, especially around the stubble from last year that gave us a clue where we should be looking for asparagus this year.

We thought we might have some asparagus to go with dinner the next day, but when I went out to search the bed after church, I found only about four spears worth picking. I put them in a jar with some water and set them in the refrigerator to wait until a few friends were ready to join them.

It didn’t take long. The temperatures rose and so did the asparagus. I was bringing in some of the harvest every day last week.

The next step was to cook it. My mother had always handled that part and we had never paid much attention to anything but the picking and eating. Mostly, she’d cut it up, put it in water, cook it on the stove and add a bit of butter, as we recalled. How long she cooked it we had no idea. I pulled out one of the old cookbooks and looked up an entry on asparagus. It suggested cooking it for somewhere between 12 and 15 minutes.

One evening when I came home for supper, I stepped inside and smelled asparagus cooking.

My sister had arrived a bit early and decided to cook some of the asparagus. It was a bit overdone, we agreed — the lesser time would have worked better — but it still tasted like fresh asparagus.

The asparagus kept coming and I kept picking. I took some to a neighbor and put together a bunch to drop off at my niece’s house on my way to work.

On Friday, my sister and I put together a quick meal of leftover stir fry wrapped in tortillas, scrambled eggs and some cooked asparagus. We did better with the cooking time although I managed to forget to add the butter.

Of course, asparagus isn’t the only thing that’s been growing. The rhubarb has taken off as well. My niece’s husband separated some of the plants for giving away as soon as the new growth began poking up out of the ground. Two of them grew in pots on our front porch for longer than intended before I managed to deliver them.

Our plants are looking rather healthy and I suppose we should be thinking about making some sauce or perhaps a pie.

For now, though, maybe keeping up with the asparagus is enough of a challenge.

Donna Thompson is the trends editor of the Times Telegram. Email her at donna@timestelegram.com or call her at 315-866-2220.

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